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Life in Hilversum

I’ve been living in the Netherlands for almost seven months, yet never managed to tell much about my “Dutch home town”! Here’s a little virtual tour to Hilversum through my eyes.

Hilversum (the name comes from “houses between the hills”) has approximately 85,000 inhabitants, which means that this town is not exactly huge but still offers lots of services, trendy shops and restaurants. During the weekend the streets in the city center are full of people and there’s always music playing happily in the background. Even though Hilversum is more of a “summer town”, you can still find locals sitting outside drinking beer and watching people pass by in January.

In the Netherlands this town is often called “the media city” since it is the principal center for radio and television broadcasting in the Netherlands. You can quite often see people walking around with massive cameras and microphones doing interviews in the streets. Hilversum has quite a few local celebrities living in fancy houses at the edge of the town. (Not that I would ever recognize them!)

Hilversum is also very international, mostly because of the European HQ of Nike being located here. You can hear several different languages in the local supermarket every day. The internationality also means that Hilversum is full of restaurants offering food from around the world. Only on my home street there are restaurants representing dishes from India, Greece, Spain, Italy, Thailand, Japan and even Mexico. Funnily, Hilversum even has a small Finnish shop!

Hilversum is also known for being surrounded by amazing nature which offers a great chance to do outdoor activities. For runners and cyclists it’s perfect to head to the trails close by in the woods. Unlike in many other cities, here you don’t need to run several times around a central park to get your exercise.

The nightlife here might not be as special as in Amsterdam, but for me the local “Nike Pub” is enough for spending time with colleagues on a Friday evening. I have to also mention that Hilversum has nine coffee shops, but I’ve never visited them. The only downside about living here is the fact that it’s not the most exciting place on a Saturday night. Most people like to party in Amsterdam, but for those living in Hilversum it gets tricky to travel by night trains. Like many other people who live here, I’ve become quite lazy and prefer staying home in the evenings.

Unfortunately many interns do not want to live here in Hilversum. When I ask why, they tell me that it’s “little and scruffy”. This might not exactly be Amsterdam (or even anything close), but it’s certainly not scruffy! I happen to know that many interns who laugh at Hilversum have never been to the city center. I also know that these same people have been homeless when arriving to the Netherlands because they couldn’t find an apartment in Amsterdam (but didn’t give Hilversum a chance). And once they did find housing (more like a mini-sized room on Amsterdam’s dirtiest district with a rent of 800e/month), they have to spend at least one hour a day traveling to work and back. That makes over five hours a week of sitting in the train just because “Hilversum isn’t cool.” Not maybe very surprising, but it’s often the serious and hard-working Finns who prefer to live in Hilversum.

I’m actually going to end this post by quoting my colleague who visited the center of Hilversum for the first time a few weeks ago. She said “Oh, this is actually a really nice place!”

Anna

A 24-year-old Finnish-English traveler, sharing stories from the rainforests of Borneo to the beaches of Sri Lanka, and from the Sahara desert all the way to the Arctic circle.Current location: The Netherlands